# Hacktoberfest and a Large Codebase

By [PyBash](https://paragraph.com/@pybash-2) · 2022-10-28

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so it’s time for hacktoberfest
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I do open-source most of my projects, but saying I contribute to open-source projects that aren’t mine would be a stretch. So I decided to contribute to some projects this month.

> For those of you wondering what [Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.com) is, it is a month-long celebration of open source by [DigitalOcean](https://digitalocean.com)

### what I contributed to

I chose to contribute to some documentation and code. The code was mostly minor improvements and security updates while my documentation contribution was to [Chakra UI](https://chakra-ui.com).

dealing with a large codebase
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When I decided to contribute to the Chakra UI docs, I assumed it would be easy to get them up and running. But boy oh boy was I wrong. It took me just 5 whole minutes to clone the repository, and another 5 minutes after two failed attempts to install the dependencies. The contribution guide also mentioned about issues on windows, which **I obviously ignored**. The project had around **800** files.

It was painful to run it. Every change in the markdown meant a full server restart and each restart would take at least 1 minute. After which examples would take another minute to load. Remember that issue on windows I ignored? Well, I shouldn’t have, cause it prevented the proper functioning of hot reload on Windows.

### what I learned

*   Never contribute to big codebases. Big codebases are really good for learning stuff
    
*   I should fix possible issues beforehand
    
*   Buy a better PC
    

### mistakes

*   Shouldn’t have ignored warnings
    
*   Should’ve googled more

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*Originally published on [PyBash](https://paragraph.com/@pybash-2/hacktoberfest-and-a-large-codebase)*